Life-threatening fungal infections continue to rise primarily due to a growing immunocompromised patient population. These patients include people receiving chemotherapy as well as ones with autoimmune inflammatory diseases undergoing immunomodulating treatments such as TNF-α blockade (e.g., for treating Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, or lupus erythematosus). Moreover, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of fungal infections as the use of biologics and chemotherapeutic agents has increased. Such fungal infections are associated with a high mortality.
A major barrier to delivering appropriate clinical care to the immunocompromised population has been inability to predict which of these subjects will develop invasive fungal infections. The dramatic rise in use of the serum β-D-glucan and galactomannan assays evidences the desperate need for these diagnostics. These tests are neither sufficiently sensitive nor specific, however, for the diagnosis of invasive fungal infection. Hence, there remains a need for a diagnostic tool that identifies those individuals with deficits in fungal immunity, that will allow clinicians to focus on delivering specific therapeutics and prophylactic counter-measures. There also remains a need for a fungal immunogen that may raise at least some level of protective response against fungal infection.